


Trailblazin'

by UnwelcomeStorm



Category: Worm - Wildbow
Genre: Alt!Power, Gen, Tinker!Taylor
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-04-23
Updated: 2017-10-31
Packaged: 2018-10-22 20:47:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 8,528
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10704798
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/UnwelcomeStorm/pseuds/UnwelcomeStorm
Summary: Worm Altpower. Tinker!Taylor joins the Merchants willingly and on purpose.





	1. Chapter 1

Audio record of interrogation of Hebert, Taylor; AKA “Fixer”  
June 25, 2011, 0730 hours  
Interviewer: Miss Militia (ENE Protectorate)  
Witnesses: Dauntless (ENE Protectorate), Dragon (Guild)  
Safety Protocols: Standard class C restraints for parahuman villains without a Brute rating.  
_Begin recording._  
  
**Fixer:** Look, is all this really necessary? The chains and all? You know I’m not gonna Hulk out on you.  
  
**Miss Militia:** We’re not taking anything for granted. Not from you.  
  
**Fixer:** But I don’t have any of my shit on me, you know that! Christ, you guys searched me enough times, I’d think you’d have gotten the memo. Besides, we made a deal.  
  
**Miss Militia:** That you have yet to deliver on, which is why I’d like to start with a few questions.  
  
**Fixer:** Haven’t delive-- bullshit! I’m here, aren’t I?  
  
**Miss Militia:** We have few records for your earliest activities as a parahuman, could you start with--  
  
**Fixer:** Shut up, no. If that’s how you want to play this, then I’m not saying jack shit until I know you’ve held up your end. Let me see her.  
  
**Miss Militia:** You’re not in a position to be making demands.  
  
**Fixer:** Fucking watch me.  
  
**Dragon:** Sorry-- may I interrupt?  
  
**Miss Militia:** Go ahead, Dragon.  
  
**Dragon:** Thank you. Fixer, would a video clip be sufficient? She can’t be moved at present and you’re not getting clearance to go visiting.  
  
**Fixer:** ...if it’s recent, sure. You’ve still got some cred at least, Dragon.  
  
**Dragon:** Yesterday should be fine then, I trust. I’ll play it in the monitor to your left now.  
  
_[Secondary recording audio redacted]_  
  
**Fixer:** How is she?  
  
**Miss Militia:** We’re still hopeful she’ll make a good recovery, but it’s going to be slow. You of all people should know that.  
  
**Fixer:** Christ. Yeah, okay, I know. You’re doing your end.  
  
**Miss Militia:** So now it’s time to start yours.  
  
**Fixer:** Got it. Alright… what do you want to know?  
  
**Miss Militia:** May as well start from the beginning.


	2. Interview Log 01: "It started small."

Interview Log: 01  
  
Would it be pretentious to say it started out small, like most things do? Or maybe, self-aggrandizing to say I had the best of intentions, even at my lowest points? Or maybe-- wait, no, back up. I don’t think I’m using ‘aggrandizing’ right… fuck. I had a word for this. I had, like, a whole thing prepared. I had a monologue you could set to dramatic music and it’d be like the teaser trailer for a sweet new movie. Shit. It’s gone now.  
  
Uh.  
  
Look, the important thing is that _it started_ , that’s really all that matters in the grand scheme of things. I mean, the stuff afterwards is important too, but it wouldn’t be there if I hadn’t tried taking the back entrance to Winslow High one day all the way back in, like, October.  
  
I’d spotted a glint of red hair loitering near the main doors of the school, thanks to a well-timed sunbeam peeking through the grey haze that is Brockton Bay’s skies at least 60% of the year. It could have just been a shaft of red light glinting off of blonde hair, owing to it allegedly being dawn somewhere past the clouds, because some old white fuck somewhere thought it was a great idea to get teenagers awake and herded into stone prisons before anything approaching a reasonable hour. So it might not have been Emma lying in wait for me, but I didn’t feel like taking that risk that day. So I swerved right and started the march through the cold to get to the other side of the school building, and huddled in a corner nook about halfway around, I spotted a group of kids taking a smoke break before class. A breeze confirmed my suspicions that it wasn’t tobacco smokes, either.  
  
And that’s when the thing happened that kicked off the future: I changed direction and walked over to them. I think I half-expected them to sneer and curse at me, since I was already well on my way to having “Pariah” replace my name in the school yearbook, but they didn’t. I stopped a few feet from them and did a sort of awkward shuffle. “Hey.”  
  
“‘Sup,” one replied.  
  
“You’re smoking weed behind the school?” My powers of observation were great even then, I know.  
  
“Gotta problem with it?”  
  
“...what’s it like?” I asked instead. Maybe they were already mellowed enough to start feeling generous, or more likely the upperclassman was already in the Merchants and knew an easy mark when he saw one. Either way he beckoned me over and held out the group’s current blunt. I hesitated, visions of the old D.A.R.E programs playing through my head, but walked over to them and took the joint in clumsy fingers. He made a ‘go on’ sort of gesture, so I took a steadying breath (stupid, I know), then took my first pull of herbal inhalant. Then I had my first coughing fit that was so bad, I nearly puked, and I’m pretty sure I did pee a little.  
  
“Holy shit, you’ve _never_ smoked have you? Ha haaa, oh man! We’re poppin’ a cherry here!” The whole group was laughing, and someone was slapping me on the back as I choked on my own lameness. I used my sleeve to scrub tears and snot off my face as Upperclassman Merchant continued, “Okay, okay, no worries-- that happens to everyone first time. Mikey even threw up on his shoes.”  
  
“Screw you, Don.”  
  
“So yeah-- get your breath back, then take a small drag, and try to hold it. Then blow, get your breath back, and do it again, got it?” Don handed me back the joint, I guess he’d stolen it back while I coughed to keep me from dropping it. He pulled another from his coat and lit up, took a drag, and passed it to his friends, so I guessed the half-joint I was holding was officially mine. I followed Don’s guidance, and eventually thanked the only group of kids who’d willingly and on purpose interacted with me in months. Greg and Emma’s Posse don’t count. Then I decided that I was skipping Mrs. Knott’s computer class and heading to the cafeteria instead, because _holy shit pancakes sounded so good right now._  
  
Pancakes are always good, so that really shouldn’t have been a surprise, but right then they were the most important thing in the world. Screw worrying about Emma, I needed a maple syrup IV, stat. I needed it so bad, I forgot that Winslow’s cafeteria didn’t even _have_ pancakes, and I spent a good 20 minutes wandering the halls because I’d also somehow lost track of where the cafeteria _was_. I blame the fact that I couldn’t stop squinting, for some reason. I blame that for almost running into Emma, too.  
  
Literally. I hadn’t qute connected the bell ringing to the hallways suddenly being filled with students, and I got bounced around a bit between shoulders, and took refuge from the human tide next to Emma’s locker. I think it was Emma’s locker. I don’t know for sure, I only thought that because Emma was standing next to it, and she gave me a look like I’d stepped in dog shit.  
  
“Ugh. Go away, Taylor, you’re getting your greasy skin everywhere. Someone should bug bomb you, I bet you’re crawling with lice. Hey, maybe I’ll tell the nurse I saw some, and she can cut your hair off to make sure you’re not spreading parasites to everyone, hmm?”  
  
“That would suck,” I said, and tossed myself back into the bumper-car simulation that was the hallway. Bumper cars, like at that pizza and arcade place Mr. Barnes took Emma and I to for her 10th birthday. Pizza sounded so good right now, holy shit. I started looking for the chemistry lab instead, because I couldn’t find the cafeteria and I needed to create a hybrid of pizza and pancake. I would do science to them.  
  
Some time later, as I was filling the pizzacake-shaped void in my soul with my bagged lunch instead, three things occurred to me:  
  
One, that I was eating my lunch for breakfast, hiding in the gym locker room because I was supposed to be in Math class;  
  
Two, that I had been threatened by Emma to get my one positive feature removed out of spite and lies, and I hadn’t given a single fuck about it;  
  
And three, that _this_ was why everyone said not to do drugs. Because they were _awesome_.  
  
* * *  
  
So, I’ve never been one to do things by half. Striking up a partnership with good ol’ Mary Jane was no exception. The whole ‘reefer madness’ thing they used to (and sometimes still do) crow about is pretty much bullshit, if you’re curious, and the science says Marijuana has a pretty low physical dependency profile. Mental dependency, though? Debateable, but in my case, I embraced addiction whole-heartedly. A quick means to completely de-stress and let the bullying slide off me like water from a duck’s back? _Hell yes please_. Call it a crutch if you want, but my life was a broken leg by that point already. I had found a means to keep walking and I was going to use it.  
  
I found Don again a few days later, and he smiled when he saw me coming, because in retrospect the ‘Merchant knows an easy mark’ guess was pretty much spot-on. His enthusiasm waned a bit pretty quickly, because I wasn’t there to ask for a freebie. I had _questions_ , lots of questions. I wanted the terminology, I wanted to know about weights, and prices, and tools. I wanted to know about potency, and how long a high lasts, etcetera etcetera. Like I said, I don’t do things by half. I’m pretty sure he thought I was hoping to report him to the teachers, or the police. My terrible reputation actually worked in my favor, though, because clearly the teachers didn’t give a shirt about me, and clearly I had legit reasons for wanting to be mellow. I eventually convinced him that I was way too inexperienced to be duplicitous, and he agreed to sell to me. I bought a dime bag of weed, and he showed me how to roll a joint properly.  
  
So, here’s something I didn’t clue into until later: weed is harvested right around the start of fall, so going off of basic supply/demand dynamics, it’s cheaper to get in the autumn than in summer. Don was crafty enough to pack those dime bags pretty full for his new customer, enough for four joints if I rolled them thin, so I established a routine pretty quickly. I’d hand over my allowance, Don would hand over a little sandwich bag with a fat nug of green, and I’d treat myself to a sandwich and some chips to go with my after-school high.  
  
I initially set a rule for myself, No Smoking Before School, and kept the joints strictly as a reward for lasting through the day. My attendance actually went up, I started doing some chores for neighbors for a couple extra bucks, and Dad, seeing this, increased my weekly allowance to a whole $15. Score. Life actually got kinda tolerable for one Taylor Hebert. Even better, by December, Emma and her Posse had actually eased up on me. Sure, they were still raging cunts, but they’d cut down on the rage part a bit and didn’t actively seek me out as often. Attacks of opportunity were still game, but thanks to having double-period Biology on Tuesdays and Thursdays, I barely saw the trio those days now that they weren’t actually setting up ambushes out of their way. I amended my rule to allow for a Wake and Bake if I didn’t use my After School High the day before.  
  
But then, inevitably, the world moved to crush my happiness.  
  
“What’s this?” I asked Don, holding up the dime bag with the distinctly _not_ fat nug of green inside it. “That’s not enough. What gives?”  
  
“It’s a dime bag, genius. Set price instead of by weight, remember?” I scowled at him. Don rolled his eyes like an asshole. “Prices went up, so I gotta sell higher. Tough shit.”  
  
“But this is like _half_ of what you sold me just last week!”  
  
“Like I said: tough shit. Guess you need two bags a week now. Gonna pony up?”  
  
He had me over a barrel and he knew it. I couldn’t ask my father for more money and there weren’t that many neighbors who’d pay me to shove a sidewalk, even if it snowed every week. “I don’t have that kind of cash,” I ground out between my teeth.  
  
“That sucks, then,” Don said, and put on his best aloof expression. It wasn’t very good. “Though, if you’re interested… I know a guy who could use some errands run.”  
  
I was skeptical, but also interested. And also kind of worried. “What sort of errands?”  
  
“Nothing major, just take a few packages around town sometimes. Like delivering pizza, easy.” There was no way he was being literal and we both knew it. Don was a Merchant, his contact was a Merchant, so those ‘deliveries’ had to be drugs. Or guns. Or guns stuffed with drugs. No way, I was not getting into that.  
  
Don reached into his backpack and pulled out a deck of cards, with a little bit of tape keeping the lid sealed. “Stuff like this. Quick and easy, probably just two, three times a week. Thirty bucks each.”  
  
Wait-- thirty to ninety dollars a _week_? That was more than a month’s allowance, and for what? A couple hours and a bus pass or two? I could start _and_ end every day feeling good and put away plenty to buy regular, non-illegal stuff that I liked. I could get an mp3 player by New Year’s, even. I told him I didn’t want to do anything dangerous. He said he could set me on an easy, safe courier route.  
  
Goddamn, Don conned me hard. Looking back, this shit is just embarrassing. I’m honestly disappointed in myself. I did get that mp3 player, though, and a cool new watch for Dad for Christmas, since I decided to double-down on running errands during the winter break. Dad thought I was at the library, enjoying the internet, and sometimes I even was. Mostly I was on various busses or sidewalks, earbuds in place and my hands tucked around a wrapped delivery in my hoodie. I don’t stand out much, it was easy work.  
  
First day back in January, I found Don and the guys I never learned their names, having a quick smoke circle around the side of the school. I was already pretty mellow from my morning routine, but nostalgia and networking and all that crap, so I sidled on up.  
  
“‘Sup Taylor,” Mikey greeted me, because I lied. “You hungry?”  
  
“Duh,” I said. He handed me a brownie. Mikey was a good guy.  
  
“Shit, man, warn people first.” One of the guys I didn’t lie about not knowing said, eyes wide. “She even done edibles before?”  
  
“Oooooh… yeah. Forgot. Sorry, Taylor.”  
  
“Why would you apologise for giving me chocolate?” I sucked fudge streaks off my fingers. He’d baked that thing with a ton of butter, it was glorious.  
  
“Holy Christ she ate the whole thing.”  
  
“Well this should be fucking hilarious.”  
  
“Uh, Tay? You’d better, like, go home. Now.” Like I said-- Mikey was a good guy. A lot smarter than me in some respects. Not nearly forceful enough, though.  
  
“First day back, if I skip Blackwell will call my dad. Anyway, I gotta get to my locker, so, tl;dr version of why you’re staring at me like that?”  
  
“You are going to be so fucked up in an hour or so, seriously.” Mikey and Don gave me a quick rundown of why I should not have done this. Lesson learned: eating weed is a lot different than smoking it. Also, don’t accept candy from strangers. I should have known.  
  
“Okay, so… I’ll turn in some homework and say I ate undercooked eggs for breakfast, then go home.” It seemed like an okay plan. It probably even was, but… it kind of hinged on one thing. Namely, that Emma and her Posse had not decided to turn the Raging Cunts back up to 11. Alternatively, that I had the reflexes and paranoia necessary to avoid such.  
  
The locker door clicking shut behind me, with me inside it, was a pretty resounding “No” to both. After a couple of months of relative peace, of having a coping mechanism, such as it was? The reality that set in at that moment hit harder than the past year _combined_. I don’t think there are words for what I felt there. Fear, certainly. Horror. Disgust. Hate. The shapes of the words and letters isn’t enough, not then and not now.  
  
Still not sure if that was the best or worst possible time for the brownie to kick in, but-- goddamn. I saw some _shit_ , let me tell you. Not even the shape of the words for it was left by the time I woke up, strapped to a hospital bed and with my dad sitting next to me, looking like someone had aged him ten years in ten hours. I had a head full of numbers, and pictures, instead. And one new, overpowering desire, to find Mikey and get another brownie. But not to eat it.  
  
I was going to do _science_ to it.


	3. Interview Log 02: "Motherfuckers"

Interview Log: 02  
  
  
So waking up in the hospital was not a very good move on my part, not that it could be avoided. More to the point, I’d actually woken up several times before, but I was so out of my gourd that the doctors had run a toxicology panel on me, which changed my diagnosis from ‘assault victim’ to ‘tripping balls.’  
  
Yeah, you heard that right. Winslow found out I had drugs in my system, and they jumped on that with both feet. Noooo, they hadn’t let a student get shoved into a locker, I’d locked _myself_ in, because I was high! _They_ hadn’t turned a blind eye to over a year of harassment and malicious behavior from their students, I’d gotten high and made it up! _They_ hadn’t ignored my slipping grades thanks to active sabotage and a hostile learning environment, everyone knew druggies were just dumbasses. _They_ hadn’t let a Class 2 Biohazard exist in the school for more than a few hours after someone was shoved inside of it, surely I’d gotten high, raided the girls’ toilets all over school, and wrapped the mess around me like a warm, stoner blanket. What’s that? Even basic analysis could tell you those pads were more than a week old? Nevermind that, _she’d been high!_  
  
Motherfuckers, all of them.  
  
It gets even better, though. The hospital staff knew I was a user. You know how they grade pain on a 1-to-10 scale? Being confined in a small space for a few hours and catching a wheelbarrow of infections can cause some amount of pain, it seems, but if I rated it any higher than a 4? Drug seeking behavior! Don’t increase her pain management, she’ll just get addicted. Sounds illegal as fuck to me, but what do I know, I’m just a dumbass druggie. Only Brockton Bay, man.  
  
So at the end of it, I had a ton of new problems. My credibility at school was more than tanked, I had an active target painted on my forehead; now, not only did Yon Spiteful Bitches get to step up their game, I was a pretty acceptable target overall, and I was being eyed up by teachers so much that Don and the rest didn’t want to be seen in the same block as me. My credibility with my dad took a big hit too, since-- y’know, drugs-- and he was pretty butthurt that I’d never told him about all the shit I was wading through at school. Because that’s completely his business, and not a private matter that I didn’t want him involved in. Why would I ever want someone to look at me and only see Taylor, and not know I was a shitstain on the bottom of Emma and Sophia’s boots, right? Who needs pride or dignity, they’re useless.  
  
I walked out of the hospital with a bottle of Tylenol-3 to take the edge off the lingering pain and weakness, a maxed-out deductible on our health insurance that Dad was going to be stacking overtime to pay, and a _little bit_ of an axe to grind. Lots of little axes. The kind they use to scalp people.  
  
And you wanna know the fucked up part? I wasn’t all that bothered by it. Not at first.  
  
Part of it, I’m sure, was that it was a return to the status quo; school was hell, and a handful of girls had made it their life mission to ruin mine. That’s familiar, easy. It was going to be painful as all hell to live through, especially without easy access to any crutches, but the _fact_ of it didn’t really wreck me. It just made me feel kind of numb. Now, Dad? Dad was another story. For one, he was pretty wrecked, that was clear as goddamn day. The cock and bull story they’d fed him was obviously fishy and he knew it, and he did ask me for the details, but it still meant he’d been presented with two incredibly shitty options: either his little girl had been tortured by her unnamed peers for over a year and he hadn’t noticed, or his little girl had developed a drug problem severe enough she’d tried a very involved and illogical suicide stunt.  
  
I did correct him on that, by the way. It, uh… I don’t think it helped. I think he was glad to hear me say I’d only been smoking pot, and not running around on heroin or something, because he _had_ been alive in the 70’s and all, but that just gave him impotent anger at the school to shoulder around as well. So now he wanted to fix things, make everything better, but about the only thing he knew to do was his job with the Dockworkers’ Union. So Dad sat me down at the table, put his hands over mine, and _begged_ me to be good and take care of myself. To not go down a dark path. Think about what Mom would have wanted for me. Kinda a heavy thing to put on a 15-year-old, huh?  
  
So, yeah. I _might_ have simultaneously really wanted to humor my father and make him proud, but also gotten _really_ pissed at him. Because he was giving up, and I was just getting started.  
  
The world’s different when you’re a parahuman, you know? There’s this urgency and agency all tangled up together that you didn’t have before, am I right? Knowing that you can do things, that you can know things, that you have options that you didn’t a minute before. I’d stared hazy-eyed around at my hospital bed, eyeing up the IVs and the syringes, hearing the clatter of pills as nurses walked by, and it was like-- I just knew. _I could use these_. For _what_ , I had no goddamn idea, but it was now a _fact_. I kept a lid on it for like a week, went back to school, saw how much of a shitstorm that was gonna be. Wandered around the house while Dad was at work, and just… took inventory. You’d be _amazed_ at the kind of bullshit you can pull off with everyday household cleaners. A lot of it was kinda a vague sense that if I started playing around with _this_ bottle and _this_ half-empty spray can, I could _make shit_.  
  
Except… you remember how I said I don’t do things by half? Well that still applied. I had a mountain of problems with no solution, and options that amounted to fuck all if I didn’t know what to do with them. So I took Dad’s advice, though maybe not in the way he wanted me to, because I’m sure it made Mom proud when my first move was to check out the Library.  
  
Started the same routine at school and out of it. I’d go to the Library, check out a fiction book to read, then _actually_ stay between the shelves and pour over as many chemistry texts as I could get my greedy hands on. And wouldn’t you know it, I was right. Everything I read, it was like I was remembering something I already knew, and it didn’t work on shit like geometry or social studies. And all that vague “I can use this” got specific, real quick. You know the Tinker Cycle? Start by banging pots and pans around until you get a crude tool, then use that tool to make a better tool, and so on? Yeah?  
  
_Fuck_ the Tinker Cycle. I didn’t have time for that shit. I wanted results.  
  
* * *  
  
Winslow is a shithole. It really is. Water damage in every third ceiling tile, a permanent layer of graffiti and chewed gum all over everything with a flat surface. Perfect backdrop for this kinda thing. There’s cameras at Winslow, but only about half of them work, so I kept an eye out for which ones had the little red light and which didn’t, and when I found the latter? I bought some cheap tupperware, and used a bathroom pass as an excuse to slip into an unguarded Janitor’s Closet. Mooched some cleaners and chemicals, stashed the containers behind a ceiling tile in the gym locker room. Took those home with me next chance I got, and boom, raw materials.  
  
It’s funny, I kind of thought stealing for the first time would be harder. Like, not just the act of it. I thought there’d be more impact, like I’d feel that line being crossed. Like there was a clearer divide between being a criminal and not. Not that simple, huh? After that, shoplifting a few things didn’t even seem like a steep step. That did almost get me caught, though. Did she tell you about it? Didn’t think so.  
  
So I was standing in a 7-11, eyeing the painkillers and pretending to choose which would be the best for a backache while I was actually keeping an eye on the cold meds to my left and the register to my right. I did have some ideas for those pain meds, kept thinking that the anti-inflammatory properties of the ibuprofen expy could come in real handy, but my goal was the cold meds. I’d found out that Don wouldn’t sell to me at school anymore and wouldn’t give me any courier work until heat died down at least a bit, so money was going to be an issue sooner than later. Don had promised to get me the numbers of a couple new contacts, at least, but now I wanted pot for science as well as the weekends. That was gonna get expensive, especially with some of the other ideas rattling around in my brain, so I’d made an executive decision to, uh… barter, we’ll say.  
  
So anyway, getting ready to snatch the cold meds and buy the OTC painkillers as a cover, when all of a sudden a hand comes down on my shoulder and makes me about jump out of my goddamn skin.  
  
“Hebert,” the hand’s owner hissed as she spun me around. Because of fucking course, it’d be Sophia Hess riding my ass once again. Goddamn, she needed a hobby that didn’t involve stalking me.  
  
“Hess. _What_.”  
  
“I should ask you that. This isn’t on your way home. What are you up to, trying to feed your habit?” I heard a rustle off near the register, as the clerk on duty stopped wallowing in ennui and started paying attention. Fuckdamnit, Hess, ruining my plans without even trying. I did my best Don impression and rolled my eyes like an asshole.  
  
“I’m getting a bottle of tylenol, what’s it look like? My ankle hurts ever since you tripped me earlier and shoved me into the stair railing.”  
  
“Like hell, Hebert, stop trying to blame others for your problems like a bitch.” You are my problem, and you are a bitch. What a coincidence, I didn’t say but very very loudly thought. “Maybe you shouldn’t be so clumsy.”  
  
Okay, yes, maybe I thought about poisoning her by aerosolizing a nice mixture from under the sink. Just a little bit of poison. Enough to ruin her next track meet. But I only thought about it, so that doesn’t count. I sighed. My most practiced defense was sullen silence, so I retreated into that until she released me and stalked off. Hess was probably the most proactive of the three girls with a blood feud on me, and if she was keeping an eye on me that was going to make everything harder. I needed to get a few things ironed out first, but Operation: Blackula Hunter clearly wasn’t going to be pushed aside forever, and--  
  
What?  
  
Well, it’s-- I mean, she’s black, and she’s a vicious, remorseless parasite that sucks the life out of everyone she meets. Not rocket surgery, here.  
  
Wh-- _how is that racist_?! Fuck it, just-- let’s move on.  
  
* * *  
  
There’s a couple of abandoned houses in my neighborhood, and I knew better than to think I could start a science lab in my own basement and get away with it, so having a small selection of basements other than mine to choose from was quite convenient. After careful consideration, I chose the obvious fire hazard as my first base of highly flammable operations. It wasn’t so much that the house itself was begging to be set light-- it was pretty worn down and had some missing siding, but hey, Brockton Bay-- but the basement didn’t have any windows. Bad news in case of needing to escape, good news in that I could have some lights on down there and nobody would know about it. I searched through our garage until I found the old camping equipment, and nicked the gas stove and a couple of battery-powered lamps, then stashed them in my new lair. I stacked labeled tupperware full of chemicals on some rusted laundry shelves, and the few bottles and cans of things I didn’t think Dad would notice missing.  
  
Buying a new propane tank was kind of nerve-wracking. The fear and evil fanfare I’d expected for my first forays into petty theft had apparently decided to lie in ambush for when I needed to do legitimate business transactions. I could see confetti as black as my villainous heart behind the eyes of the gas station clerk as he handed me my change.  
  
I really needed a toke. I expected to be strung tight as piano wire at school, but this was getting to be a bit much. Stress is a good motivator for risk-taking, as any college student with a deadline will tell you, so I pretty much immediately tossed aside my remaining caution in favor of a hand-written set of instructions and a pair of disposable latex gloves, and got to cookin’.  
  
It’s probably because my power lets me cheat, but making meth? Way easier than I thought it’d be. The fumes were a bit of a scramble, but some desk fans _mostly_ took care of it, and I had a good supply of cough drops now that I could take a few from, so I was probably going to be fine. Just making ordinary street drugs is about the lowest level of Tinkering possible, but it was enough to put me in a sweet _zen_ sort of state. I wasn’t much interested in the meth itself, but the _act_ of making it was something I could see myself craving. I couldn’t wait to pair cooking with a blunt, combining my favorite mellow with my new favorite focus sounded like having cake and eating it, which… which that is the stupidest fucking metaphor, if I have cake of _course_ I’m going to eat it, fuck.  
  
For a first try, I’d say it came out pretty well. Mild occlusion, but a decent quantity for the relatively small amount of raw materials I’d managed to scavenge. Once I’d actually started it, I’d started tweaking the methods I was using on the fly, almost automatically. You know, adjusting temperature by a couple degrees, more precise timing, that sort of thing. Not exactly the most prestigious first use for a superpower, right? Useful, though. I doubt there’s anyone alive who _hasn’t_ daydreamed about getting powers, about what they’d like to use them for. Things or even people they’d like to change. Cooking meth was definitely never a feature in mine, _I_ wanted to be like Alexandria. Untouchable by evil, unwavering in pursuit of justice, that kind of thing. Surprising, huh?  
  
I still wanted to be like Alexandria, still daydreamed a bit about joining the Protectorate and standing in one of those promotional posters, even as I broke up the sheet of ice I’d made and packed it into an empty Cool-Whip container, only now my fantasy had high-tech goggles and a lab coat instead of a cape. If you’re wondering how that fantasy is at all compatible with selling drugs to buy more drugs, it’s actually pretty easy to justify: when it came down to it, I didn’t want to feel like shit anymore. That’s all.  
  
When you’re being persecuted, pushed down, shoved aside, day after day, you can start to feel like a martyr. It’s hard to handle the idea that some people are just evil, just hateful for no goddamned reason, so there had to be a reason I was being picked on, right? It had to be something about me, not about them. And I wasn’t a bad person-- so maybe I was special, instead. Maybe I was hated for it. Maybe I was better than they were, and that’s why they were awful and I was a hero-- or would be a hero, if I ever got powers. Same fantasy, different gloss. I imagined that there was something about me that was intrinsically good, or just, and that made me feel better. That crutch was getting old though, getting cracked, so I think it’s a good thing I took up smoking when I did. I’m not sure what I might have done if I’d gotten put in that locker, and didn’t have something _outside_ of me I could turn to. Some promise of feeling better, even if it wasn’t from a noble source.  
  
Call it pathetic if you want. I call it realistic.  
  
So I put the container of meth inside a pie tin, then carefully layered the actual Cool-Whip on top, cleverly disguising my bartering chip as a real pie. Then it was off to the bus stop, to go check that contact Don said he’d set up for me. Spent the whole ride nervous as hell, even if my package disguise _was_ ingenious. Pretty sure I was losing weight, spending all my time at the library and not eating, or at school and not eating. Probably just shedding the pounds I’d added from a couple months of munchies, but…  
  
Don’s contact was a couple miles north of Winslow, in a neighborhood I’d never been before. Had the same early decay signs as mine, though. Most places in Brockton Bay do, especially the further you get from the Heights or the Boardwalk. When I finally found the address, I stepped over empty beer cans along the broken sidewalk leading from the mailbox to the door, then sort of stared at the doorbell for a minute. My hands were full of my Smuggler’s Pie, you see. It was a dilemma. Didn’t want to risk pissing off a potential dealer, but also didn’t want to just keep standing there. I kicked low on the door a couple times, in compromise. That way any shoe scuffs would blend in with the dirt. I stopped “knocking” when I heard shuffling inside the house, footsteps getting closer and turning my stomach inside-out. How are you supposed to _introduce yourself_ to a drug dealer? There’s no For Dummies guide on the etiquette of soliciting narcotics. I checked. But I needed to make a decision quick, because a shadow moved behind the peephole, then the door unlatched, and--  
  
An asshole grinned at me. It was Don.  
  
Two weeks of constant stress and gearing up for this. Two weeks of huddling in a hoodie against Emma and Sophia and Madison and their hangers-on, feeling every jibe and cut and insult and trip and kick and half-pulled punch. Two weeks of trying not to look at my dad’s strained expression and abandon my plans, of shoplifting, of lowering my standards so I could made the decisions I had to make, because Don didn’t want to risk the heat and wouldn’t sell to me. And the dealer he set me up with… was Don. Was _FUCKING_. **_DON_**.  
  
Something to keep in mind when dealing with Merchants: it’s assholes all the way down.


	4. Interview Log 03: "Compromise"

Interview Log: 03  
  
  
The one thing I regret-- okay that’s a lie, there’s a lot more than one-- is never making a Witty Comebacks Serum. It sounds so useful, right? Like, I know I’d never be without a dose. There are so many times I have needed, absolutely _needed_ , to be able to talk back or bitch someone out effectively. But no. Perhaps such a thing is beyond the reach of science.  
  
Don kept grinning at me, even as he stepped aside and cleared the way. I hate Don so much.  
  
“You did this on purpose,” I sulked at him. “Not cool.”  
  
He just shrugged, still showing his teeth at me, and led me a bit further into the house. It was kinda gross in there. Like, it could have been worse, don’t get me wrong-- I’ve seen Mush’s crib, and the bar goes so low you have no idea-- but I don’t think that floor had been vacuumed in like ten years. Pretty sure I saw some dried up gum in places, ick. Anyway, squeamishness aside, Don had at least been half-truthful in that he had a couple other contacts of his there with him, two more guys I didn’t know. Greasy motherfuckers, too, sitting in this dingy living room with the shades all drawn and nursing some beers before 2pm.  
  
“You Taylor, then? Don said you wanted to trade for some weed.” The guy on the left stood up, drained the last of his beer, then crushed the can on a nearby coffee table. Is it weird that this pissed me off almost as much as Don’s deception? Like, at least get the deposit back for that can. Yeah, yeah, I know, focus.  
  
“Yeah, that’s me,” I said, and sort of gestured with the pie. Like he’s just going to intuit what I’ve been doing for the past couple of weeks.  
  
“Ohh, givin’ us a pie, huh? Is it cherry?” The guy on the right leaned forward and graced me with an oily smile.  
  
“You know, Tay, trade isn’t as good as cash, so the payoff on your end has gotta be a bit… substantial, you know what I’m sayin’?” I scowled at Don as hard as I could, the crushed beer can forgotten.  
  
“Yeah, and I didn’t make you a pie, genius. I made you some meth.”  
  
“Uh… what?”  
  
“Meth. You know, to trade with? I don’t have cash because _someone_ cut off my courier work, what else am I gonna barter with?” I opened up the pie and used the plastic cover to kinda scrape off the cool-whip enough to let me grab the container hidden within. I popped off the lid, handed it over to Don because he was closest, then licked my fingers clean. Cool-whip, you understand. That was one of the few times I really got one over on Don, because he kinda went ‘holy shit’ and dumped the shards of ice on the coffee table to examine a bit closer. The other two crowded a bit closer as well.  
  
“Where the hell did you _get_ this shit, Tay? Is this _real_?”  
  
“Yes? And I just said, I made it. Like, two hours ago.”  
  
“Bullshit,” that oily guy breathed. “That’s a set-up, has to be.” But I could see it in his eyes: he wanted those rocks. You feel that? That’s _power_.  
  
“That’d be pretty stupid of me, considering I still want that pot. So, is it acceptable?”  
  
“Gotta test it first, but… I mean, since when do you cook meth?” Don gave me the stink-eye. Not without reason, I guess. It _was_ kind of unbelievable.  
  
“Again, _like I just said_ , about two hours ago. I think it turned out okay? I’ve made _actual_ pies that were harder to cook than that, so if it’s clear enough to work that’d be great.” Not an exaggeration, and not Tinker bullshit, probably. Some days, trying to keep an apple pie from sinking in the middle or a cheesecake from splitting is just goddamn impossible. I’m a Tinker, not Paula Deen.  
  
“This shit is ice,” muttered one of the mouthbreathers, even as he rummaged into his smelly jacket and pulled out a discolored glass hookah-looking thing. “Artie doesn’t cook half this good.”  
  
I assumed ‘Artie’ referred to another Merchant, likely a designated chef. Designated by me, because nobody else calls meth cookers chefs. But anyway: my keen powers of observation informed me that there was an opportunity to be had. To a Merchant, cooking meth was a valuable skill, which meant that _I_ had a valuable skill, which meant trade value in my favor, bitches. Not overwhelmingly, though. I didn’t really want to try selling meth on my own, nor did I have anything resembling a contact network or the street smarts to pull it off, which meant negotiation value in Don’s favor, son of a bitch. “So, what is it worth?”  
  
“Let’s find out. C’mon, sit over here, I’ll show you how to use a pipe,” Don said, and beckoned me.  
  
“I’m here for a mellow, not a-- whatever the hell that does.”  
  
“No dealer worth his nuts would sell something he wouldn’t use,” Don taunted me, and gestured at the ratty couch cushion next to him. Oh, for those keeping score? This was Don lying off his fucking ass again. Dipping into the sale stock is a shitty practice, and only the stupid dealers think it’s fine. You can also put another tally on any ‘Taylor does a dumb’ scorecards, because after another few protestations, I did indeed sit down on that stanky couch. I figured I’d do one hit, just to get Don off my back so he’d actually negotiate with me, so I could sell this meth, get my pot, and maybe work out a deal for more drug deals in the future.  
  
I, uh… kinda underestimated what an altered state of consciousness would do to a Tinker.  
  
* * *  
  
So, meth? It’s kinda the inbred stepcousin of cocaine. Makes your heart and your brain race, makes you feel confident and powerful. But where coke makes you feel super awesome and happily productive and ‘I’m gonna clean the whole house make everything good forever,’ shortly before your heart explodes from your chest, meth… doesn’t. Meth takes an angrier approach, and also _puts ants in your teeth_. I cannot stress that part enough. Ants. In the teeth. But it still has shades of that ‘do everything forever now now now’ energy and that was enough to get me in trouble.  
  
So I was sitting on that couch with the Merchants, all of us starting to tweek out, Don kept trying to slide his arm around my shoulders, and I was starting to wonder why my damn mouth was so wiggly, when suddenly none of that shit mattered, because--  
  
“Paper. I need some paper!” I stood up, knocking my knees into the coffee table, and I gave it a kick for good measure.  
  
“What? Why’d you need-- need any of--” Didn’t actually see which of the Merchants was slurring at me. Didn’t care, either. Temperature variations, chemical formulas, the exact molecular balances of what I wanted to make, they were all crowding my head and I needed to write them down before my heartbeat got fast enough to pump all the ideas out of my ears. Actually no, because why settle for writing shit down?  
  
“Nevermind. Kitchen! Kitchen, I am borrowing your kitchen!” Also borrowing the meth I was trying to sell. I grabbed the Cool-whip container, swept all the shards of meth off of the table and back into it, and ran off in a random direction. I actually found the bathroom first, but that was okay, there was some expired air freshener in there I could use. I scooped that up and went looking for the kitchen again, and this time I found it. Now, I have to be honest-- I don’t like working with meth. Oh sure, cooking the base stuff is easy, but that’s not what I’m talking about. Refining it, now that’s a bitch, because meth tends to make me do things out of order. Case in point, I turned on the stove in that kitchen long before I got anything else ready that needed to be heated. So, if making methamphetamine into something actually worth a damn takes, say, 12 steps? I’d start with step 4, then hit step 3, then 8, then 6, then 1, and so on. Impossible for me to really prep anything for meth ahead of time, either, so it all has to be one in one go, while I’m still tweeked out. It’s irritating as hell.  
  
I mentioned the ants, right? Again, cannot stress that enough.  
  
So I started out with about a double-handful of meth shards, and after banging away in the kitchen and yelling at Don to _get the fuck out of my space, Don, I’m busy!_ I liquified the original drug, Tinkered around with it, and precipitated the good stuff out until I had four little jelly balls each about the diameter of a dime. I let them cool on a cookie sheet and they flattened out nicely. I beamed at them. I couldn’t help it! Tinkering is a high all it’s own, and I was just so proud of what I’d made.  
  
The Merchants were somewhat less so. Don must have felt the most sober, because he stepped out of the wary huddle of unwashed bodies in the hall and back into the kitchen.  
  
“Tay, why the fuck did you turn our meth into gummi bears?!” That, I felt, was an excellent question. Why _had_ I just ruined my trade deal on a whim? Goddamn ants. When I didn’t answer, he kinda frowned and let the gears turn for a bit. Looking back, I suspect he was at least passing familiar with Squealer, because it didn’t take him long to decide: “Shit. You a cape?”  
  
More negotiating power in his favor. I hate Don. I tried to be casual, and shrugged. “Just had some ideas to work out. Look, you tried the meth, was it good to trade or not?”  
  
“...sure. Yeah, it was good shit. _Was_. You just turned it into candy, remember?”  
  
“I can make more.” More to the point: I was willing to do business. My product was better than what he could come across on his own, meaning he could sell it for more, but even better? I had an edge on the competition, able to cook better product more efficiently, from fewer materials than what should have been necessary, which just increased Don’s potential profit margins. We hashed out a compromise: he’d get the supplies, I’d work my magic, and he’d pay me a decent sum in both cash and weed. It was a deal that favored him pretty heavily, obviously, but I was pretty okay with it. He’d keep his mouth shut about me, and I would get what I wanted without having to put in the effort of shoplifting all those cold meds myself. Win-win, as far as I was concerned.  
  
“Thish kinda tashes like… raw sp’ghetti.” I looked away from my brokering with Don (which had netted me a nice fat baggie of green as a downpayment-slash-payment for the leftover meth) to see one of the mouthbreathers standing over by the cookie sheet, a dissatisfied look on his face as he chewed. I looked closer and, yep, one of the gummis was missing.  
  
“You dumbass,” Don muttered. “Tay… what is that going to do to him?”  
  
“Hell if I know,” I said, and crossed over to the cooling oven in three quick steps. A greasy spatula was quickly pressed into service to remove the remaining gummis before they too could be eaten. “But only the first one’s free.”  
  
* * *  
  
Triumph is great, seriously. So satisfying. (Uh, the feeling, not the cape. Just-- just so we’re clear.) Sure, the deal hadn’t gone _how_ I wanted it, but I still got _what_ I wanted out of it, so for the first time since the Locker I really felt like I was doing something good. I was ready to go home, make myself a sandwich, and enjoy my first toke in way too damn long. Maybe take a hot bath, too, just to maximize the indulgence. Then, when I finally had the world on an even keel again, I could start, I dunno, actually making something of my lab. Clean the place up a bit, explore what I could do, design a costume. Maybe figure out what the hell the remaining three gummis in my pocket actually did.  
  
Those weren’t as exciting as you might think, at least at first. I’d mostly just managed to condense the methamphetamine into a mildly potent, extended-release form. Cuts down on the negative effects of of the base drug (seriously, _fucking ants_ ) at the expense of some of the strength, but makes it last and last, like that commercial rabbit. Somewhere around six-to-eight hours per gummi, depending on body weight and metabolism and tolerance. I wasn’t all that interested in it, but Don certainly was. Working on that led to some other fun prototypes, too.  
  
But that was for later. For right then, it was good feelings and wellbeing and actual fucking hope for the future, and some fresh THC coursing my blood-brain barrier.  
  
So, uh, question. On a related note: have you ever heard of something called ‘state-dependent memory?’ It’s where memories are easier to recall when you’re in the same state of consciousness as when those memories were formed. Because somewhere in there, between lighting up that joint and running back to my abandoned basement hideout to introduce my lovely assistant Mary Jane into the halls of Science?  
  
I saw some _shit_. And that’s how things started really getting weird.


End file.
